Containers

A LXC manager and runner for SailfishOS

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Table of Contents

• ———
• Documentation
  • What is it?
  • Installation
    • From Chum community repository
    • From command line
  • How to use?
• Discussion
• Demos
• Known issues/limitations
• License
• Credits

Documentation

What is it?

Containers (harbour-containers) is a SailfishOS application to create, download, manage and run Linux containers (LXC) from a convenient GUI. It relies on Xwayland to run the associated desktop environment inside a new SailifshOS window:

Installation

Note	Before proceeding, make sure LXC kernel requirements are satisfied.

From Chum community repository

Install Chum from here, then search for "Containers" in its app list.

From command line

1. Install dependencies:

   devel-su
   pkcon install zypper # If you don't have it installed already
   zypper install nemo-qml-plugin-dbus-qt5 sailfish-polkit-agent python3-base python3-gobject dbus-python3 xz

2. Manually download here the latest version of lxc-templates-desktop ("noarch" folder), and qxcompositor and harbour-containers (in the folder that corresponds to your device architecture).

3. Install them either from your Sailfish file manager or using:

   cd /path/to/directory/where/you/downloaded/the/three/rpms
   devel-su
   zypper install lxc-templates-dekstop-<VERSION>.rpm
   zypper install qxcompositor-<VERSION>.rpm
   zypper install harbour-containers-<VERSION>.rpm

How to use?

The GUI of harbour-containers should be straightforward, but see lxc-templates-desktop’s wiki for more details and CLI usage.

If unfortunately you checked "Setup desktop" when creating a new container but just saw the new container icon appear and then stop witnout a terminal prompting your for a user password, then the desktop was not configured. Go into that container in the GUI, press "init container config", and then "setup xsession".

Discussion

See the TMO thread.

Demos

• Debian with i3 WM on a Pro1x running SailfishOS, with dynamic rotation (and rotation lock with keyboard opening):

  

• Kali with XFCE4 alongside SailfishOS:

  

• You can run any Linux desktop application that has been compiled for your architecture. See for instance rofi and Darktable below:

  

• While LXC containers of desktop Linux distributions are most convenient with a hardware keyboard phone like the F(x)tec Pro1 and Pro1x, Onboard is also preinstalled for compatibility with other smartphones:

  

• More pics:

  
  
  
  

• A video showcasing what LXC containers can do on SailfishOS is available here. Moar videos here.

Known issues/limitations

• No sound in aarch64 devices (or please tell us)

• No hardware acceleration

• Only prebuilt binaries of Xwayland can be used at the moment inside containers (this is automated when setting up xsession from the GUI), because latest sources don’t support the XDG_WM_Base protocol that we need

License

This project is proudly licensed under GNU GPLv3.

Credits

Many thanks to all contributors and testers:

• r3vn (main dev) - g7 - kabouik - eLtMosen - elros34 - edp17 - vaskas - dashinfantry - HengYeDev

• Container ship icon modified from Freepik - Flaticon